Coronavirus and NIPO's services

Latest update: 20 April.

The Norwegian Industrial Property Office (NIPO) is maintaining normal operations for customers applying for rights or needing help during the coronavirus outbreak. Most of our employees are working from home.

Customer Service Centre is open

Our Customer Service Centre is open as usual for business from 8am to 3pm. Some of our services will be carried out by staff working from home. We will call you back if we are unable to take your call immediately.

Visitors

We follow the recommendations of the health authorities and therefore do not accept customer visits to the NIPO until further notice. Instead, you can have a conference call or a video conference with one of our experts. Contact the Customer Service Centre on +47 22 38 73 00, send an email to post@patentstyret.no or fill out the booking form on our website.

Preliminary Search Service

We offer only preliminary search services with ordinary delivery times until further notice. Read more.

To help the business community in a difficult situation, the NIPO has decided to give a 90 day payment deadline to those ordering a preliminary search investigation. The decision also applies to invoices that we have already sent out with a 30 day payment deadline. In these cases, the NIPO will add another 60 days to the deadline and will not send out a new invoice for this purpose.

Regulations and deadlines at the NIPO

The NIPO will implement those measures we can to support rights applicants and attorneys affected by the situation, as far as is possible within the legal framework.

Deadline extensionsOn 13 March 2020, the NIPO gave internal instructions to our employees to grant a deadline extension to persons requesting this, due to Covid19. The instructions apply to deadline extensions in the application process and to correct formal errors.

For designs and trademarks, an extension of at least two months will be granted. For patents, a two-month extension will be granted. The NIPO must have received the request for a deadline extension before the deadline expires.

The instructions apply only to deadlines set by the NIPO. This means that they do not apply to deadlines determined by laws and regulations.

Examples of deadlines determined by laws or regulations are priority deadlines, deadlines for resuming case processing after the rejection of an application and all deadlines for payment of fees during the examination process.

Examples of deadlines set by the NIPO, and which are thereby covered by the instructions, are deadlines for responding to statements made by the NIPO, or for responding to statements from other parties in cases of opposition or administrative review.

Re-establishment of rightsIf you have failed to meet a specific deadline and have lost your application or granted/registered right, you may request re-establishment of your right. It will be sufficient to state briefly that not meeting the specific deadline was not deliberate, and that it is due to Covid19. In such cases, the NIPO will then take this into account without any further questions.

Corona news from Norwegian authorities

Measures for employees of the NIPO

We follow the Norwegian Institute of Public Health's recommendations and measures, as decided by the government and the Oslo municipality. Our employees will be working from home as of Friday, 13 March, unless they need to be present on our premises for service reasons.